Businesses often employ AWPs to enable workers to reach and perform tasks at high elevations at both indoor and outdoor worksites. Workers can perform tasks more safely on AWPs than on ladders because the platform size, level workspace and safeguards (including safety belts and harnesses, rails and gates) permit suitable balance and freedom of motion for individuals performing construction, maintenance and operational tasks at heights up to multiple stories in elevation.
While the platform/basket designs of AWP work areas make it easier and safer to physically move and operate tools when high in the air, workers still must carry, lift and hold heavy machinery and tools while performing their work. Such lifting and strenuous activities can exhaust workers' strength and stamina and put workers at risk for acute as well as repetitive-activity injuries. In order to surmount these problems, businesses are beginning to employ gravity-balancing articulated arms that can offload the weight of these tools. Although such arms are not an object of the present invention, it is important to understand that a gravity-balancing arm can support a heavy tool in a way that allows a worker to move the tool without bearing the weight of the tool. It was seen that there exists an unmet need in the art to connect such gravity-balancing arms to AWPs.